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The President’s Best Hope in the G.O.P.

By John Harwood September 20, 2009 9:17 pmSeptember 20, 2009 9:17 pm

President Obama intends to keep wooing the public to support for his health care goals in a scheduled Monday night appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman.” Polls suggest he has had mixed results so far.

Most critical, however, is his private effort to persuade one person: Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine.

I think it is time for Senator Olympia J. Snowe to do the same thing I’ve done…wake up and realize that President Obama is not a good person. I came to this realization when I studied his relationship with Tony Rezko in Chicago. Obama looked the other way at obvious evil that harmed his own constituents. I think his same willingness to look the other way at evil helps explain how ACORN became one of his strongest supporters and now one of his biggest liabilities. I know from personal experience that he was a Marxist socialist in the 1980s. It’s frightening for me to read that Sen. Snowe is apparently under the influence of a con artist. Obama, after all, is 100% committed to single-payer in the long-run…no matter what he is saying now to Sen. Snowe.

Take Arthur H. Vandenberg, who service in the US Senate (Republican from Michigan) began in 1929.

Long an isolationist opposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s foreign policies, he became an internationalist in the 1940s as an unlikely proponent of American membership in the United Nations.

Vandenberg — quite deservedly — belongs on the list.

And there are other prominent Republicans on it. Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio joined with such Democrats as Robert Wagner or New York and Alan Ellender of Louisiana as co-sponsors of President Truman’s major housing legislation late in the 1940s.

Senator Olympia Snowe could be next. She may not win accolades from her fellow Republicans. But she would earn a place in history textbooks.

The elements of Senator Snowe’s policies seem more like those of a Democrat than a Republican. It’s to be noted that some Republicans are already discounting her as a fellow party member, thereby weakening the claim of bipartisanship that she appears to seek to advance.

The trigger provision proposed by Sen. Snowe will kill the public option. The Medicare Prescription Drug Plan has a trigger mechanism for the importation of cheaper drugs. It has not been implemented and seniors continue to be gouged by the drug companies. Lawmakers that support a trigger will give the appearance of supporting a public option. The bill would be designed to make pulling any trigger impossible and will prevent a public option from ever existing.

The conditions for a public option have already been met — premiums are high, out-of-pocket costs are increasing, and 94% of markets are anti-competitive. A strong public option should be made available to all Americans. It will save hundreds of billions of dollars by eliminating unnecessary middlemen who take a large part of the health care pie.

As far as the stereotypical Republican vs Democrat debate, I have to say that I understand where Republicans are coming from when they say that they do not want government control. I, too, would prefer to avoid a regular bureaucratic colonoscopy if possible. That said, I believe strongly in the Democratic notion that government control is necessary. The current recession in point, when government stepped out of the equation we allowed “Wall Street” to take over our world. When they got greedy, and made all together poor choices, our nation suffered severely. The challenge, and I believe the way forward, is to have these two ideologies reconcile their differences, and find a truer American perspective that we may call success.

My problem with Congress is the lack of willingness of the Republican legislatures, not necessarily the Republican voters, to come to the table and assist an valid amalgamation. Point in case, where is a single Republican health care proposal? I am not trying to be divisive in anyway, I just want to know how are we ever to come together and reach the success I defined when the answer is always, and always simply, “NO!”? Democrats, namely Obama, has made very obvious overtures to the Republican arguments, and the Republican Congressmen are yet to recognize this and use this as a tool to begin real, effective dialogue.

In this sense, I believe Snowe is in the right frame of mind. I don’t agree with her proposals per say (although I do have to say that it is good enough to make me content), I just admire her willingness to work with others. Is this not a childhood lesson we have all learned: cooperation, sharing, and learning the fact that we all live in this world together despite our differences? This just seems elementary to me.

My bottom line: Just get something done, for crying out loud! The failure of Congress would be a failure for America and a major setback for the American Dream!

I admire Ms Snowe’s courage to defy GOP ‘s line to support President Obama for the health care reform.She is pragmatic& cares for the the people ,getting something DONE is important than just going on arguing for ever My HAT OFF to Ms Snowe ‘s courage

Olympia,
Your state needs a public option, we can’t wait for triggers.. which as Susan Collins won’t support. She calls it a delayed public option. Oddly enough, I agree. Put the public option out there, so we can immediately benefit and cover those without coverage. Go for it Mz Snowe. We support you, do the right thing.

“I haven’t changed as a Republican,” she said. “I think more that my party has changed.”
Well then, why does Senator Snowe continue to belong to a party to which she disagrees on so many fundamental issues?
It is bemusing to me why some high profile Republicans, including Collin Powell and Mr. Brooks of the NYT, seem to believe the GOP will reform. There is no Martin Luther about to post a letter with a political version of The Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Senate. If Olympia truly objects to her party’s shift Right, she needs to understand that if anything, under the pressure of the radical rising star Glenn Beck, it’s only going to get worse. If she is going to continue “… to support the right policy,” she had best get out now! Perhaps, although less dramatic than Luther’s bold action, her defection will give others, who currently disagree with the neocons’ ideology the courage to follow her lead.

Olympia Snowe has said she will not support a public option. The Baucus plan is full of other problems in addition to lack of a public option. We need a bill that the public supports and that includes a strong public option,and then pass the bill with reconciliation if necessary. Snowe is being used by the insurance industry to deny affordable health care to our citizens and destroy the competitiveness of our middle class. This is just to enrich the health insurance industry and vertical monopolies within the health profession Without a public option, the answer is either single payer which obviously will lead to more cries of socialism or a large regulatory body putting a large number of stringent controls on the health sector which will also be decried as socialism. The public option is the least onerous method of achieving good affordable health care for our citizens and restore some competitive ability to our workers in this global economy.

You simply won’t have affordable health care if you don’t limit it in some ways. Triage is the oldest and most basic element of the practice of medicine. You need to negotiate what a baseline insurance plan will cover and how to extract the cost of it from the whole economy in a way that is reflected in the price of everything that contributes to medical expenses.

I salute Sen. Olympia Snowe for the positions she has taken. She approaches the problems knowing she is representing and answerable to the people of Maine and NOT TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OR ITS LEADERS.

In contrast, most republicans in the Congress seems to have only one agenda: To Bring down Obama Presidency. That is their goal. Thus far, most of them seem to have not shown any sense of cooperating.

And where were all those Republican bozos when George Bush shoved trillion dollar deficit down our throats?

I strongly believe people like Sen. Olympia Snowe should be the leaders of the Republican Party. She is level headed, honest and objective and is cooperating to help our country without sacrificing her Republicanism.

The problem is that we have a system in which there effectively are only two political parties. Just because Senator Snowe (and others) are not happy with the rightward drift of the Republican Party, that does not mean they would be comfortable with the Democratic Party. Just as the Democratic Party swings between too far left and barely tolerable for most Independents, the Republican Party has swung too far right (and away from barely tolerable) for many Independents. I think one of the reasons our campaigns are so nasty is that each major party is viewed as too extreme for too many Independents and moderates and each party needs to cast the other in as bad a light as possible to capture the “lesser of two evils” vote.

Olympia Snowe is an example of why the Republican Party is hurting so badly at this point. However, the Blue Dog Democrats who were elected last year may become endangered if the Democrats overplay their hand as the majority in Congress. Barack Obama (and anti George Bush)was the reason the Democratic Party majority expanded last year, and that majority will be at risk unless the Democrats in Congress are careful.

There’s no use in trying to cross party lines for health care. The GOP doesn’t want anything to do with reforming health care.. if they had it their way there wouldn’t have been any talks about reforming it at all. Its vital that we get health care soon. I had a friend wait 40 hours in an urgent care unit after being attacked in downtown chicago because she couldn’t afford nor receive any health care benefits. I do not believe that any of the GOP members either in the seats or on the streets realize that this is killing inner city america where most of the population resides. Lets stop having minority party members dictate what the rest of the country needs.

“People really want to have something done” observed by Snowe. Health Care Reform is the most important something.This is a first step toward a right direction by one of the GOP. A sense of participation to form a health care reform is needed from any republican. That show GOP is not completely.rotten. May be she is a life line to save GOP and bring GOP up a step from the shameful pit by all kind of lies created by republican radicals to oppose this mandate

It is past time for Obama to look for any support from any Republican. As long as they cling to the philosophy that “I have mine and to hell with you if you do not” the only hope resides within his own party. We can do this without and in spite of obstructionist Republicans. They marginalized progressives for the last eight years, now it is time to turn a deaf ear to their whining.

You simply won’t have affordable health care if you don’t limit it in some ways. Triage is the oldest and most basic element of the practice of medicine.

— Steve Bolger

We already do. It’s called 47 million uninsured. It may be more affordable (to the people who are covered) than the public option. And it may be more affordable than allowing the federal government to do for health care for the under 65 crowd what the federal government has done to bankrupt Medicare.

Most other modern nations do not have a culture of “you can have it all.” Most other modern nations do not have politicians as gutless as ours, who are not willing to tell their constituents exactly how their access to treatment will be limited. Most other modern nations do not allow their lawyers to get rich suing doctors and hospitals, and do not give victims of malpractice millions and millions of dollars. Most other nations do not have lawyers getting rich suing tobacco companies, where everyone knew as early as the early 1960s that cigarete smoking was bad for your health.

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